Second Learning

Now that Christmas is over, I can let you all in on a little secret. Rather, he's a mini secret: Mini Santa.

He's an incredibly popular shoulder pet who has spent the past month-ish (since Thanksgiving) sitting on my right shoulder and handing out a random item from his inventory to everyone who dares to click on him. His inventory, while full to begin with, is modifyable which means that anyone can add to it. In my case, I added an EduCube t-shirt (hey, free marketing is free marketing), and some other one-prim furniture. I repackaged everything inside EduCube boxes for the brand identity.

This is a great marketing tool. It is much better than just having an available freebie at my shop and hoping that people stumble in to it. This way, people encounter Mini Santa wherever I go and if they chose to click him, they get a freebie and (and this is why freebies are handed out in SL) a landmark and a notecard encouraging them to drop by my store to see what else they might like.

So I've sold you on the Mini Santa idea and now you want to now how to get one of your own. I have good news for you: he's free. If you have an account on OnRez (and you really should since I use them to sell all of my EduCubes and they have excellent pictures of the EduCubes since I'm too cheap to upload them in world), you can buy Mini Santa there. However, if you are an in-world only type of person, check out XD Fusion to score your own free Mini Santa. He's located on the wall with a bunch of other free and worth-every-L$ products.

Labels: gadgets

There are, of course, other places besides Manpower Sim to find professional clothing.

Because I so completely fell in love with the business suits that were offered by Blaze, I decided to head out and find a business suit that I could wear on my newbie-friendly budget. Since surveys pay out around LS $35 a pop, I figured that would be the upper limit of the budget.

Tipped off by Girl Meets Second Life and Illusions, I decided to see what this Bare Rose store had to offer. After all, if they have male business suits, perhaps they have female ones as well?

First, here is what Illusions had to say:

::BareRose:: - If someone asked me what I thought was the largest and most popular store on SL, without a second thought I would say Barerose. They have the largest concentration of awesomeness in the virtual world, and if any place deserves the term "mecca", it's B@R. Their prices aren't exactly freebie price (although they do have a freebie corner, and a 10L store), but their prices are so insanely low for the quality of work you're getting (125L for a full color pack of gothic wear you'll worship and adore), I'd be a horrible person if I didn't list them here. From conservative to uber goth, to ethereal elf lady to cyber queen, from slinky lingerie and swimwear to traditional Japanese kimono, they have something for EVERYone.

So I popped on over to Bare Rose to see what I could find. They mix their dollarbies, and cheapies, in with the rest of the general population of the items at their store. And the store is massively overwhelming. This almost made me want to hire a personal shopper to navigate for me to find a cheap business suit for women, so that I could write this entry for you. Which, in turn, inspired me to create the current EduCube contest. But, armed with grit and determination, I pressed on.

Before I go any further, I'd like to take a moment to explain how I am indicating the locations of things after this point. I am listing locations as (X, Y, Z) for the x-coordinate, y-coordinate, and z-coordinate. How do you use this? Well, you can walk around until you luck out on the right set of coordinates, or you can open up your map and at the bottom right there are three coordinate values. Change these to the ones listed, and you should magically teleport to the locations I have listed. If not, it is back to walking around until you figure out the right set of coordinates.

(130, 30, 30) The first suit that I stumbled upon is called The President. Even though it is being modeled by male avatars, I have no doubt that it would look equally as good on a female avatar. You get both the blue and the brown double-breasted suit, along with all three tie color choices for a cheap (but pricy for our budget) 140 L$. Youch. We need something cheaper.


(61, 49, 30) At 100 L$, this is cheaper than The President and you can, of course, wear it without the apron to give professional talks at formal symposia (such as, say, accepting the Nobel Prize in Economics), but then if you were going to the Nobel Prize awards in Second Life, you could also afford the price tag associated with this outfit. For our purposes, however, it is still considerably outside of our 35 L$ budget. Moving on.







And look at that, our prayers have been answered by finding the section of Bare Rose (NW corner) where everything is 10 L$. Of course, this also means that there is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the store, as it is picture after picture after picture after ... well, you get the idea. With that in mind, hopefully you can use the picture that I have to help you narrow down the exact location of these amazing finds:

(239, 229, 34) Remember that you can click on the pictures for a larger photo so that you can better locate the find. What we see here are three business suits, each priced at an affordable 10L$. There is Business 101, 102, and 103; each different from the other by color alone. Also, next to the suits are three different bowtie outfits (I think they are the complete outfit, but I did not have the L$ to check). For the purposes of my shopping, I decided that the blue suit would complete my look so I purchased that one.

Right click on the box and select "Buy" to purchase.



Even though this suit was modeled by a male avatar, I decided to try it on anyway. And what do you know, it looks just as good on me as it did on the avatar model. Or at least I think so! Please excuse my photography skills, I don't know enough about lighting to fix the lighting in this picture, and because everyone and their brother is signed in to SL today, it is laggy and I didn't feel like fixing it anyway. Just wanted to take a quick picture and then move on from there.

By the way, I take all of my pictures in Windlight, the First Look viewer (more on that probably next week -- I'm halfway done with writing that entry). Isn't it amazing how well the water, sky, and clouds texture? It almost really /is/ a Second Life.



-= Jasmin Loire =-

Labels: clothing

If you haven't seen, we have an EduCube Holiday Headquarters (Yes, you will have to walk in the mall. Click the map for a larger version if you need it.)


At this location, we are selling a variety of upload-fee only wreaths. That means that every wreath is 10 L$. Now you can do your last minute decorating in style. And you can do your last minute decorating on the cheap.

Hurry, they are gone in 8 days!

Labels: educube

While Windlight is pretty, for a newbie (and even for my non-photographic forrays into Second Life), I highly recommend OnRez's Viewer by the Electric Sheep Company. If only they would make a version for Linux, but I digress.

The OnRez viewer is more newbie friendly and actually puts buttons and lists in places where you would expect them to be. It is also excellent if you intend to be more of a user of Second Life, rather than a builder as, by default, the building menus are hidden (but can be accessed by pressing [CTRL] + [4]).

Sadly the OnRez viewer is themed to be CSI: NY, which is great if you are a fan of the show and only slightly annoying if you are not. The orientation island associated with the viewer, and set home point, are similarly CSI: NY themed.

In fact, if I were starting over again from the top, I would just create an avatar through the CSI: NY in Second Life website, because at least those avatars do not suffer from the just rezzed look that plagues many newbies. The CSI default avatars have prim hair (the Mont Blanc of hair) and relatively custom made skins.

Not to mention that they come with some potentially custom last names.

Labels: viewer

Official Class Listing

What do they do to celebrate New Years where you live? If you are from the United States, the tradition is to drop things. In New York, it is a glittering ball, in Atlanta, Georgia, they drop a giant peach (fitting, because they are the state from which peaches come), in New Orleans, Louisiana, they drop a giant pot of gumbo. But the drop we are most concerned with is the one from Miami, Florida, where descending from the sky in a giant red pump (that's a kind of shoe) is Sushi, the drag queen.

It is _so_ all about the shoes! We are going to build a sculpted giant red pump and then position our sitting animation so that we can descend from the sky in style. Back home at the EduCube Headquarters, there is even a fully created Drag Queen avatar for you to pick up to wear as you descend from the sky.



Have some fun this New Years as you call attention to the most important item in your wardrobe, your shoes!

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Name: Giant Red Pump
Cost: Materials are Free
Where: Meeting at the EduCube Headquarters Classroom
Class Size: 10
Time: We begin promptly at 11 am PST/2 pm ET. If you show up and no one is there, that is because we have already begun.

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Class skills covered: rezzing prims, converting prims to sculptie, texturing sculpties, placing sit targets and sit animations in prims

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Spot 1:
Spot 2:
Spot 3:
Spot 4:
Spot 5:
Spot 6:
Spot 7:
Spot 8:
Spot 9:
Spot 10:

Labels: class

Mark your calendars, EduCube is offering its first class to the public.

Name: Build Your Own Wreath
Cost: Materials are Free
Where: Meeting at the EduCube Holiday Headquarters (Yes, you will have to walk in the mall. Click the map for a larger version if you need it.)

Time: We begin promptly. If you show up and no one is there, that is because we have already begun.
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An arts-and-crafts project like one done by preschoolers across the US: build build your own wreath.

Class skills covered: rezing, resizing, texturing, placing, and photographing prims.

Labels: class

Part 1

Step 5: Right Sizing in Second Life
We want to ensure that when we go to load our wreath back into Second Life that it will not be squashed or stretched in any direction. There is a really neat trick to make sure it looks the same in Second Life as it does right now.

Go to Image > Canvas Size.



On a piece of paper/back of your hand/your sleeping roommate's forehead, copy down the numbers listed for width and height. Then click "Cancel". We don't want to change anything on this screen, just get information.



We will come back to this later.

Step 6: Saving Properly
Go to File > Save As (why "As"? because you are already using a pre-made file and it will just save over your snapshot unless you do something different) and name it "wreath.tga". Now click Save and agree to whatever pre-sets it asks you to agree to.



That's it. That's all you have to do to save transparency in Gimp. You can now laugh at your friends who are using Photoshop and freaking out at something called an "Alpha Layer". You don't have to mess with that. Win for you!

Step 7: Uploading and Creating Your One-Prim Wreath
Open up Second Life. Press [Ctrl] + [U] to upload an image. This is where your 10 L$ comes in, so you need to have it if you want to pass this step.

Browse over to wherever you saved "wreath.tga" and select it. This will now give you a preview window that looks something like this:



Look at how squashed it looks. No matter, we'll fix that shortly. Feel free to re-name the image whatever you want and then click "Upload (L$ 10)". Bye-bye hard earned L$!

By the way, for those of you wondering how Linden Lab makes their money, they make some of it off of upload fees such as this. So don't consider it a fee to be avoided, but a "Thank you" for the ability to play Second Life at all.

Now, rez a cube. "How?" you ask. Rewind your brain back to the rezzing of the cubes that we did during our class to build the multi-prim wreath to begin with. Or you can watch this YouTube video ( http://tinyurl.com/2tgngn).

Texture all of the sides in "Transparent". Select-Texture the front side with your wreath. I've already put my wreath into mostly-position for this picture, but here is what I've got:



Now comes the tricky part: getting the sizing right. Retrieve the written figures from Step 5 and click on the Object tab for your wreath prim. Set the Y-Size value to match the "width" and the Z-Size value to match the height. Except, rather than inputting the numbers as ###, which is how The Gimp gave them to you, you input them as #.##. Perhaps this picture will make that clear:



Now, aside from the fact that you might need to change your width to being on the X-Size instead (you'll know if you need to do it), you are finished.

See, now wasn't that easy?

Labels: tutorial

I scooped FabFree! Awesome! (Update: It appears that they have since blogged about the fabulous find as well, but when I left a tip on their tip line, they still hadn't.)

I'm on Wilted Rose's Subscribe-o-Matic group and when I logged in today I was informed that there was a new outfit out by their tree. A new outfit and then some. So I've gone from looking like the image on the left, to looking like the image on the right (click for bigger picture), at least until Christmas has passed.



Here's how I did so for 3 L$. Need money, get it with no money down.

Skin: S4 Creme from Tuli - 0 L$
Hair: Candy Cane Valentina from Wilted Rose - 1 L$
Shape and Eyes: Eve from Style Your Destiny - 1 L$
Shirt, Pants, Cuffs, Shoes, Socks, Scarf, Ear Muffs: Winter Outfit(s) from Wilted Rose - 1 L$

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And don't forget our wreath building class with one session offered just for blog readers.

Labels: clothing

Part 1 | Part 2

Hair
As much as I like the hair pictured in FabFree's image, I really didn't want to spend more time sitting in a camping chair to earn another 1 L$ (my usual ATM was broken). Enter Shopping Sherpa's blog entry on Bewitched which appeared to promise freebie hair at quality styles. So, off I go to Bewitched!

I arrived to find that while there was a whole wall of free hair, it required camping for 120 minutes. I plopped myself down in a chair to camp for my hair, not quite realizing that I was camping for 2 hours, whereas I could have camped for only 5-8 minutes and purchased hair from Gurl 6. Ah well, live and learn.

Not one to quit part way, I continued to sit in that chair for the full two hours (while I wrote Part 1, 2, and 3 of this entry).

I dropped by Gurl 6 anyway and, since I'd already been seated for 120 minutes the additional 5 minutes were a drop in the ocean, I picked up the clearly marked freebie hair.

Armed with my new hair, it was back to the photo booth where I took my final makeover picture. (Check out my alternative hair.) You'll notice that I solved my naughty-bits problem. What am I going to do with that top? I'm going to give it away to the first person who IMs me (Viv Perrin) in world. Ready? Set. Go!

Total Costs:

L$ = 1 - 2 (depending on whether or not you go for the Gurl 6 hair)
Hours Devoted = 2.5
Extra Freebies Discovered = 6
Compliments Received = 3
Photos Taken and Edited = 17

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There are, of course, other sites to find freebies besides going all over the place. Some freebie collections are located at the following:

The Free Dove which has sooooooooo many clothes and shoes, and also a wall entirely devoted to hair. There are some gift certificates there for designer hair, rather than reduced-quality freebie hair.


GNUbie Store which has dollarbies, the pictured six skin pack (though selection changes often so it might not be there), and large amounts of high quality skins and hair. GNUbies is less organized than The Free Dove, but tends to have a higher quality of product.

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Viv's latest wishlist item: LanieWear Photo Background to make it easier to take pictures for you. Grateful enough that you'd like to help me achieve that goal? Consider this my virtual tip jar:

Search People for "Viv Perrin". Click on the "Pay" button. Send me whatever tip you think I deserve. When I have 35 L$, I will buy the photo background and do another style make-over entry, this one for the gents.

Labels: tutorial

Step 1: The Necessary Tools
In order to follow these instructions, you are going to need a very specific tool set. You will need (in no particular order):

• The Gimp image editor
• 10 L$
• Your snapshot of your wreath.
  

Getting The Gimp
In order to get The Gimp, please point your web browser (your real one, not the dinky one they give you inside of Second Life) over to - http://www.gimp.org (or just do a Google search for “The Gimp” and take the first link).



There, you will see a screen like this one. Click on the “Download” button and download, and install The Gimp. It is free and works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS everything.

Why did I pick The Gimp? For one, because it is free, and runs on all operating systems, which means that if you can read this tutorial, you can use it. For a second, because creating a transparent texture is super-easy in The Gimp.

Getting 10 L$
The easiest way to get 10 L$ is to convert some real money to L$. Failing that, you can always use the techniques written here. Or, for those of you reading this tutorial in-world on my rather awesome book: http://tinyurl.com/39xw2v

Step 2: Cropping Your Image to the Wreath
Open up The Gimp. To go File > Open and select your snapshot that is located somewhere on your hard drive (you do remember where you save your snapshots, right?). This should load your snapshot in a new window.

Click back over to your main Gimp window and select the square selection tool (the upper left-hand button). Then return to your snapshot and draw a square around your wreath. Don't worry, we'll make this tighter later. For now, you are just getting rid of excess blank white space.



Now, on your image window, click on Image > Crop to Selection to crop your snapshot down to just the selection. As I said before, we aren't worrying about being perfect at this stage, since we have a later cleanup stage yet to go.



Step 3: Turning the White into Transparent
We are now going to use your third Gimp window, the one with the layers. On that window, please click on the "Copy Layer" button. It is two to the left of the trash can button (or you can just look at which button is circled on the image.

This will give you a new layer (those things listed above the buttons) called Background Copy. This is good.

Now click on the "Background" layer (the one on the bottom) and then click on the Trash can button. We cannot do transparent on the "Background" layer, but we can on the "Background Copy" layer, which is all that we should be left with.

Back over to the main Gimp window now. You are going to chose the "Select By Color" tool, which looks like a finger pointing to a red square with a blue and green square also available. It is the top row, fifth from the left.

Once that has been selected, click over to our snapshot window where you are going to click on the white. Where? Anywhere, so long as it is white. This will result in a lot of select-dashes appearing all over your image. Are they outlining all of the white? Good!



Now, and this is the hard part, you are going to press the [Delete] key. If, for some reason you mess up at this or any other stage (though this is the stage where you will notice a mess-up) you can always press [Ctrl] + [Z] and go back a step. Your image should now have a checkerboard background (which is how The Gimp indicates transparency):



Step 4: Getting Rid of the Empty Space
Still on the image window, go to Select > Select None to get rid of your selection-dashes. Then head over to Image > Autocrop Image which will tighten your image down to just the bare minimum. We like this.



You should now have a much tighter image.



Continue on to Step 5.

Labels: tutorial

Mark your calendars, EduCube is offering its first class.

Official Class Information

Name: Trial Run - Build Your Own Wreath
Cost: Materials are Free
Where: Meeting at EduCube Holiday Headquarters
Class Size: 3.
** REGISTER IN ADVANCE ** by IMing Jasmin Loire in-world.

If this trial-class is a hit, then this will be offered to a larger audience.

-----------------------------------------

An arts-and-crafts project like one done by preschoolers across the US: build your own wreath.

Class skills covered: rezing, resizing, texturing, placing, and photographing prims.

Remember:
* meeting at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Omega%20City/145/88/25
* limited to 3 testers (I'd appreciate them being folks with limited building experience so I get true feedback on how detailed my instructions need to be)

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12 pm PT Class (Open to Blog Readers)
Spot 1:
Spot 2:
Spot 3:

1 pm PT Class (Listed on SL Search)
Spot 1: Czari Zenovka
Spot 2: 01 Hifeng
Spot 3: PhoenixSoleil7 Timeless

Labels: class

Part 1

Skin
User created skins can run anywhere from 500 L$ to 1000 L$ if not more. I headed over to Tuli since FabFree had gone to all the trouble of matching a skin to a shape. I'm just that pale white normally (my students encourage me to get some sun), so this skin a definite win.

The first thing that I notice when I arrive, is the presence of a Christmas tree that is surrounded by presents. There is no hovering text that encourages me to click on the presents, but I click nonetheless. And almost all of the presents contain, well, presents. There was only one empty box. Most of the presents were lovely pieces of clothing but one of them was the S4 Cream skin. My quest to find where they hid the freebie skin is over before it had even begun. Back to the photo studio!

Here is my new look, bedecked in my new skin (along with the new shape). Oh, and I found a solution to my previous top, that came in the form of a present freebie from Tuli: a new sweater. This one is red and sassy enough to show some chest, but no cleavage. This is actually something I'd wear to teach in a real classroom. There are additional prim cuffs and a turtleneck, but I actually like the sweater more without them.

But Houston, we have a problem. If you look at the image from FabFree and the picture above, you will see that the face does not look the same. The whole reason I went through all of this trouble to go to the links and find specifically that shape and specifically that skin was because I really wanted that face. After some serious searching, I discovered that my viewer, Windlight, was the problem. Hopefully they'll fix the lighting situation. In the mean time, I created a facelight and placed it on myself. I do not have to go into detail about how to create a facelight because you, being an educator and not a game or software developer, have the real viewer, not a "first look" (meaning still in the stages of being untested) viewer. Here is how it turned out:


Much better.

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Tune in next time for our final installment: Hair!

Labels: tutorial

The EduCube in-world headquarters seems all decked out for the holidays! But this is more than just a pretty facade.



It appears that we have hidden many surprises around our land. Surprises for you to find! I wonder where you should start ...



EduCube Headquarters

And please don't forget to click on the sign!

Labels: educube

One of the tell-tale signs that someone is a newbie in Second Life is their skin and their hair. The default skins, while serviceable, are low quality and almost all of the long-time SL users upgrade to user-created skins. Hair is a similar case.

My just-rezzed look is better than most, because I went through the CSI:NY avatar creation system (more on that tomorrow). However, even it isn't perfect, so it is off to solve all problems.

I attended an NCI (New Citizens I...?) class during one of my first days in Second Life and they did a show on avatar personalization. Their advice was to start first with a shape, then get a skin, hair, and finally new clothes.

I did a bit of fashion-blog shopping to see if I could find an avatar I wanted to adopt and I found one. The face shape was awesome (I naturally have an oval face), the body seemed proportional, and the makeup was not overwhelming. And so, armed with the links that the site provided, I set off to acquire all parts of that avatar and make them mine.

A side note, check out the rest of the site for other completely-from-free-or-dollarbies avatars. Ignore the clothing, because after all, we are going to dress like the professionals we are, but look at face shapes and skin realism. Perhaps you can find the upgrade you are looking for on that blog, which will save you a lot of time guessing and checking.

Another problem I hope to solve along the way is the fact that under my crocheted top, some hints of pink are showing. This is due to the fact that the default skin from CSI:NY has those naughty-bits. Newbie skins created through Linden Lab do not suffer from the same problem. However, one thing to keep in mind is that skins you are going to pick up later along the way may come complete with photorealistic naughty-bits. This is because artists wish to be truthful to their medium ... or something.

Shape
Following the directions given to me by the NCI class, I first went out to acquire my new shape. I was excited about getting a new shape, since I felt that my default shape was a bit forehead-heavy (though otherwise functional).

I headed over to Style Your Destiny where many surprises were in store for me. For one, they have a garbage can that encourages you to go dumpster diving. If you do so, you get a sweet freebie. I scored a necklace pack, which is great because I was just thinking that I didn't have any jewelry, and with my hair in a ponytail, I needed something to frame my face.

Another surprise was the freebie-pack that was located on the outside of the store, across from the talking garbage can. It contained, amongst other things, a free pair of panties. Yay, the starts of my underwear collection!

I also noticed that Style Your Life was one of the few places in Second Life that I've encountered that acknowledges Hanukkah. You cannot know how happy this makes me. Truly happy. (^_^)

I head up the stairs and turn to my right where I find a vendor located next to another freebie package. This vendor does not announce prices, nor do I see anything that says Eve, but wouldn't you know that as I click through the selection on the vendor, there Eve is! And I can buy her for the 1 L$ that was advertised on the FabFree blog.

I neglect to pick up the eyes that FabFree used because my default eyes seem natural enough to me (I'm bright-green eyed in person) so I figure that I'll use these for now. I may yet return to pick up those eyes at a later date.

I also noticed that for your male avatars, they have 1 L$ shapes as well. Remember, you are receiving a shape, and not the skin, so if your skin is as pale white as mine (indicating that you, like myself, need to get offline and out into that vitamin-D inducing sunshine), these shapes, coupled with the right skins, will make you look like yourself, only more in shape.

Here I am wearing the Eve shape. The first thing I noticed was that my chest problem has grown. I'm also shorter, and my forehead isn't as forehead-dy. This shape came with its own set of eyes, so I took a closeup picture of myself modeling the eyes. Extreme closeup.

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Tune in next time for the second installment: Skin!

Labels: tutorial